The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 31, 2016
The Jesus who went home to Nazareth in today’s gospel was not the same Jesus
who had left there. He was a changed man--changed by experiences both
dazzling and harrowing. He had left Nazareth and followed the crowds to the
Jordan where he had been baptized by John and seen the heavens open up and
the Holy Spirit descending on him. And he had heard his Father’s voice
from heaven: “You are my son, my beloved one. My favor rests on you.”
That was more than enough to change a man!
But there had been even more: from the lofty
pinnacle of his baptism, he descended into a dark valley: forty days of
fasting in the desert, forty days of prayer and struggle that culminated in
a terrible encounter with the Evil One who tried to divert him from his
mission, enticing him with temptations that must have seemed so very
sensible, temptations to use his gifts and his powers for his own advantage
-- to turn stones into bread, to turn the whole world into a kingdom for
himself. In other words, temptations to turn God into a magician or to
redefine God in terms of radical selfishness. And to each of those
temptations – at what cost we can only guess -- Jesus had said “no,” and
that “no” must have steeled him for that one great “yes” that still lay in
his future.
So, yes, the Jesus who returned to Nazareth was
indeed a changed man. Nazareth may have been home, but there really was no
going home for him now: no returning to the way things used to be, and
certainly no pandering to the hometown crowd by telling them things to make
them feel good. No, instead, he took them to places the prophets had
always taken God’s people: uncomfortable places, scary places. And
they took him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built,
determined to hurl him off the precipice.
Some homecoming! It hadn’t started out
that way. Luke’s account of Jesus’ return to Nazareth indicates that
the people’s first reaction to him was positive. “All spoke well of
him…they were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”
But when he began to invade their comfort zone: when he went beyond reading
stirring prophetic words from Isaiah to speaking pointed prophetic words of
his own, amazement quickly turned to indignation and then to fury, proving
that prophets don’t often play well at home. Who, after all, was Jesus to
remind them of how, because of people’s hard-heartedness, the great prophets
Elijah and Elisha had worked their great wonders for outsiders only,
unworthy outsiders, heathen foreigners? Who wants to hear a message
like that? The people of Nazareth certainly didn’t. And we probably
wouldn’t have, either. And yet it is a recurring message in all the
scriptures, including the gospels. Outsiders become insiders.
St. Luke’s gospel, which we will read for much
of this new year, is literally loaded with stories of God favoring
outsiders, of outsiders becoming insiders. It’s a central theme of his
gospel. Think of the shepherds who were first at the manger, or of the
tax collectors and prostitutes who dined at table with Jesus, or of that
band of women disciples who followed Jesus to minister to him.
Outsiders, each one of them. Or think of the Good Samaritan of the
parable, or of the Prodigal Son, or of the good thief who stole heaven from
the cross, or of the Roman Centurion who found faith at the foot of the
cross. Outsiders each one of them, but insiders for Jesus.
But Jesus is not the only prophet in today’s
readings. Jesus the prophet is paired with Jeremiah the prophet.
Jeremiah’s call, like Jesus’ call, had come to him while he was still in his
mother’s womb – a way of saying that his call was woven right into his very
being. Unlike Jesus, he tried to resist it – pleading youth and ignorance –
but to no avail. “I will be with you,” God had said, “I will put my
words in your mouth.” And what were the words God put into his mouth?
Hard words, disturbing words, anything but comforting words. “State my
case against my own people,” said the Lord. “Brace yourself.
Stand up and speak to them. Confront them by telling them everything I
bid you…They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you,
for I am with you to deliver you.”
You see why today’s first and third readings
belong together. I wonder if Jesus, driven from his hometown synagogue on
that wave of fury, his own townspeople clamoring for his life, thought of
Jeremiah and his lot? If he did, he must also have taken comfort in
God’s promise to be with him.
The call to be prophet. It’s our call,
too: given us on the day of our baptism. And it’s a call that can take us to
Jeremiah kind of places and Jesus kind of places, places where we’d rather
not go, places that will stretch us, and cost us, and catapult us beyond our
comfort zone – as when, for instance, we take a stand for the value of human
life – each and every human life from the womb to the tomb; or when we
advocate in favor of stricter gun controls; or when we speak out against the
death penalty, or speak up on behalf of the poor, or refugees and
immigrants, or the mentally ill. You get the idea.
The possibilities are many and the likelihood
is that answering the prophetic call will bring us more grief than comfort,
that it will make our lives less comfortable, not more. Yet it is our call –
our baptismal call -- and God says to us as God said to Jeremiah, “I will be
with you…I will put my words in your mouth!” It is here at the
Eucharist more than anywhere else that God does just that!
Father Michael G. Ryan
